


Best (Boy)friends

by Do_it_with_the_Howell_Lesters



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: (2) oblivious boys, Fluff, M/M, based on a reddit post, dan is cute af, fluffy af
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-26
Updated: 2019-02-26
Packaged: 2019-11-06 02:26:32
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,708
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17931065
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Do_it_with_the_Howell_Lesters/pseuds/Do_it_with_the_Howell_Lesters
Summary: Dan thinks he has realised something about his ‘friendship’ with Phil.





	Best (Boy)friends

**Author's Note:**

> Enjoy some pure fluff since it's been a while since we posted!  
> Written by howell-lesters  
> Thank you do-it-with-dan for beta-ing!

Dan sat back into his trusty sofa crease and pulled his laptop over onto his knee, chewing his (already fairly distressed) lip as he opened the usual culprits of his procrastination; Tumblr, YouTube, Wikipedia and began to scroll. After a while of mindlessly scrolling, eyes scanning the pages but barely taking in any of the content passing his unfocused eyes. His mind was elsewhere.

Eventually, he caved and opened an, incognito tab and brought up Reddit, logging into the profile he used for browsing the host of random threads, which was thankfully in no-way linked to his real name and identity.

He opened a new post and began to type:

\----

This is kind of a weird one.

So, there’s this guy, Phil. Me and Phil have been best friends for 9 years, why he wanted to be my friend I’m not sure. He’s a bit older than me, that’s how we got in touch, I found him online. (I’m not a weird stalker, I swear.)

He was this really talented guy who made videos, talked about his life and wore a lot of plaid. I was 18, bored and desperately wanted to be cool, and that was a big thing at the time. But I sucked, long story short. I wanted to join in, but i couldn't make clips. Like, I really needed some editing tips and I came across him, and I thought I would reach out and ask him, cause he wasn’t going to reply, right?

I assumed he wasn’t anyway, he was way out of my league as a friend. I mean he’s older for a start, 4 years. So he was 22, graduated from a Masters degree of all things, probably went to the coolest clubs, had a bunch of trendy friends and cool interest, in short, way too cool to be friends with me. I was just some teenager (regrettably) about to starting a Law degree.

Plus he was physically out of my friendship league, picture this; Cool, tall, dark emo hair and pale skin, pretty thing and attractive but not in like, a model type of way, just in a handsome, strong featured way with striking eyes. Then there was me, a scrawny kid with brown emo hair and weird brown tan. Yeah. Exactly.

But somehow, he responded and I got over my weird fear of not being a good enough friend, and we became ‘internet friends’. We talked literally every day, and I realised we genuinely were friends. I mean, you can’t really spend 4 hours on Skype to someone without being friends.

After 4 months we met in person, and from there it was like a snowball effect. We met up whenever we could to hang out then the following year I moved up to Manchester for university to live which meant we were only a cab ride apart. I just assumed he has all these cool friends he just never talked about, but he always made time for me so I never botherer.

I was hospitalized after only 2 months, and Phil was there to keep an eye on my. Uni life went from bad to worse, and having no family nearby and only 1 friend to put up with the average 2 existential crises I was having a week taught me one thing; we really were best friends.

Fast forward a year and I had dropped out of university to pursue something I was actually passionate about, and Phil let me move in with him. I know, I think he’s mad too. But I came to realise, I had been so wrong about Phil. ‘Too cool’ for me my ass. He is a total freaking nerd, just like me. He has a bigger collection of anime plushies than even me, enough books to open his own store and my god, who knew a grown man could be so obsessed with Buffy. Seriously.

Anyway, flash forward to today, and we’ve since moved twice. Yeah, we. Both times together, and 90% of the time now we work together too. We have joint business venture, work together on projects for our videos, we’ve even travelled to pretty much every part of the world together for work.

Puberty has been kind to me in the looks department. I mean I wouldn’t say I was on Phil’s level of attractiveness, but I’m pretty confident in how I look and feel.

The point I’ve been leading up to with this rundown f my life story is this I guess. Lately I’ve been wondering if me and Phil are actually a lot more than best friends at this point. For any number of reasons, but here’s some of the big ones I’ve been thinking about;

• Phil is pretty introverted, he likes to keep to himself to unwind most of the time when he isn’t working. When I first noticed it years ago I would keep to myself and let him just chill when he had been working, but then I noticed that like, 2 months after I moved in, HE would be the one to keep coming to me and wanting to hang out or do things together.  
For ages he was always pretty weird about touching, especially when we worked or filmed together. I wasn’t too bothered about that, I just made sure to not touch him when we sat close or were hanging out. But for the last few years he’s been like that with everyone except me! Now he’ll take my hand sometimes or put a hand on my back, when we’re filming he’ll poke my nose or shove me, sometimes he’ll even flop onto the sofa and put his feet in my lap or lean on my arm when we watch TV.

• At first when I would sleep over at his parents or his flat one of us would sleep on the couch, or the floor or something, and if we went travelling we would get separate rooms or at least separate beds, but now we just share a bed when we’re visiting family or if a hotel gives us a double bed. One time I even woke up with his arm over me while we slept, and I’m not gonna lie, my heart did that really cringey flip thing they talk about in movies, an I thought about how nice it felt. When he woke up we both just smiled, I said ‘no homo’ and we burst out laughing.

• We visit each other’s families and I go on his family vacations with him. I mean, I don’t have to explain that one, that’s weird for most friends, right? And on the odd occasion, like some Christmases or holidays when we visit home alone, we’ll text each other like ‘I miss you’ or ‘I saw this today and it reminded me of you’

• We go places alone a lot, like sometimes places you wouldn't go alone unless you wanted to be cheesy and romantic, like the beach at sunset or for meals at restaurants that are too fancy for friends.  
We travel together, and do all these cute things. We held Koala bears and hung out with Kangaroos at Cleland Wildlife Park in Adelaide, explored Yoyogi park and Harajuku in Japan, even whale watching on boat in Brisbane.

• This biggest one though is the fact that neither of us have dated anyone in the 9 years since we met. I haven’t had any interest in dating, probably because I alread feel like I have Phil. I’m bi, which my small circle of friends know, but Phil has never really spoken about his orientation.

I don’t know, I guess I think about Phil a lot. He’s attractive, kind, so funny and one of the most creative and intelligent people I know. He’s one of the few people that can make me smile. When I’ve been at some of my lowest moments mentally and emotionally he’s been there to make me open up to the possibility that things aren’t as awful as they seem. He can make me laugh until I’m wheezing and making this awful, cringey ‘hoo hoo hoo’ sound.

He can make my whole day with one of his stupid texts, or some of the dumb shit he says.

So, you can probably see where my dilemma is. Some of the stuff that we do can be explained as normal, straight guy, best friend behaviour, but a lot of it just… can’t.

Things are going well right now, really well. I feel like we’re both the most comfortable we’ve ever been in our own skin, and with those around us. We’re coming to the end of a huge work project this right now, the biggest, and frankly one of the most successful adventures we’ve ever taken together. It’s been a huge step in letting people in, and I feel like it’s had a big affect both, in the best way.

And I know, I think I’ve said ‘we’ just as much as I’ve said I in this post. But it’s because that’s how it feels, we’re not really two I’s anymore, we’re a we. Phil is pretty reserved about his personal life though, so I guess I’m going to have to be the brave one here.

So really, what I want your advice one is this: I think I’m in in love with my best friend, and have been inadvertently dating him for the best part of 9 years. How do I ask him if we’re boyfriends, or if he wants to be?

\----

Dan didn’t take the time to re-read his post, mostly through a niggling fear in his stomach that he would chicken out and delete the whole post. So instead, he just hit ‘post’.

The sound of socked feet shuffling along carpet brought him back to himself. Just as he closed his laptop over, he felt the couch dip beside him and the click of buttons on the remote, as the familiar theme song for one of their most re-watched animes, Free!, played in the background.

He felt a warm weight on his shoulder, and saw a familiar swoop of black hair in the corner of his vision.

Sometimes he wondered if he really needed to ask at all.

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you enjoyed!  
> Drop us a comment if you can!  
> Check us out on Tumblr @do_it_with_the_howell_lesters


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